Petrichor: Rain & Storms

Realistic rain and storms: rain types, puddles, runoff and drips, branching lightning with delayed thunder.

A downpour over the river under a heavy cloud deck

Features

Rain

• Rain types that change during a long rain: drizzle, rain, downpour and thunderstorm, blending smoothly into each other. Intensity swells and ebbs with gusts, wind turns slowly and slants the rain.
• Drops with depth: they taper, glint and vary in size and speed; curtains of rain sweep past with the wind in sheets, coarser and higher the further away they are; light gets dimmer and colder under rain clouds.
• Rainy air instead of a flat grey wall: the haze deepens with distance and settles in valleys, so ridges behind ridges fade in layers; heavier showers drift across the land; the sky turns into a cloud deck with dark rolls and rain shafts on the horizon, lit up by lightning.
• In snowy and dry land (deserts, badlands) the mod steps aside and the weather is vanilla.
• Rain never passes through walls: falling slanted in the wind, drops stop at the wall and the lee side of a building stays dry.
• Splashes on the ground, rings on water, spray from leaves and mobs, mist over the canopy in heavy rain.

Water on the ground

• Puddles gather in hollows and on flat ground, reflect the sky and the world, ripple under the rain and dry out slowly afterwards. Wet ground darkens and shines; ground under roofs stays dry with a soft edge.
• Water runs off towards edges, spills over steps and drips from roofs, eaves, cliffs and leaves - also for a while after the rain.
• Splashing footsteps in puddles.

Sound

• A soundscape placed in the world, not a recording in your ears: rain is heard from where it actually falls - through the open door, from the field on your left, from the crowns above.
• Every surface sounds like itself: grass and earth, stone, planks, metal, glass, wool, puddles and open water each have their own field recordings, light and heavy.
• Intensity matters: a drizzle is a soft hush with single drops you can pick out, a downpour a dense roar; recordings crossfade with the rain's intensity and gusts.
• Shelter: the roof above you drums according to what it is made of - a tin roof rings, planks knock, a skylight taps, a tent thuds, a thick roof rumbles. Rain beats on the windows the wind drives it against.
• Muffling: rain behind walls, windows and roofs sounds muffled (a low-pass filter), not just quieter - step inside and the storm becomes a cosy murmur; open the door and it rushes in.
• Single drops falling off eaves and leaves land on stone, wood, metal or a puddle - and keep dripping after the rain.
• Rain far away in every open direction and the wind in storms give the world its size.

Lightning and thunder

• Branching lightning with a growing leader, return strokes and afterglow; flashes light the sky and the world.
• Distant bolts and flashes inside the clouds during thunderstorms.
• Thunder arrives after the flash at the speed of sound: a sharp crack nearby, a rolling clap further away, a low rumble from a distant storm - and a dull boom when heard from indoors.
• Extra strikes during thunderstorms prefer the tallest spot nearby.

Cinematic storm

• The world holds its breath: for a moment before lightning strikes the view darkens - then the flash.
• A close strike overexposes the view; afterwards the eyes need a moment in the dark, and the bolt lingers as a fading afterimage.
• In the light of a flash every falling drop shines and freezes in place, like in a strobe.

Configuration

Everything can be tuned in Mods -> Petrichor: Rain & Storms -> Config, with quality presets for weaker computers. Works on the client alone; on the server too, every player sees the same weather. Muffling is turned off automatically with Sound Physics Remastered.

Compatibility

• Shader packs (Iris, Oculus): the rain, splashes, drips and distant curtains are drawn through the pack's weather program, so they take on the pack's look and lighting. Puddles become pixel-edged pools of real water that the pack draws with its own water (reflections, waves). The mod's sky haze and the wet sheen of the ground step aside - packs bring their own fog and wet surfaces. Sounds, lightning and the cinematic storm work as usual.
• Sodium works.

Requirements

NeoForge 1.21.1.

Screenshots

Rain water dripping into a cave through an opening

Credits

Made by Pocky. Source code: GitHub

Sounds: CC0 field recordings from Freesound - the full list of recordings and their authors is in the README.

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